Taking a mental health break

These pants make me want to cry.  It seems like nothing I do is making them any better.  I've been getting help from lovely lady at Pattern Review, who's been very patient, but I think if she could react though the computer she'd strangle me.  We both made the comment that it would be much easier if we were actually in the same room.  I know how difficult and frustrating it is to try and diagnose and solve issues from a distance.  My mom calls me all the time with her computer problems, and it's usually an easy fix, but I can't see that until I actually get my hands on it.  Until then it drives me nuts trying to explain what I want her to do, when she doesn't understand what I'm telling her.  Which is kind of where we are with this pants pattern.

So I spend the morning playing on facebook, doing laundry, straighing up the kitchen...anything to avoid the sewing machine.  Then I thought maybe there was somebody at the local sewing machine dealer who could help me.  Turns out they couldn't, but while I was there I got to test drive a expensive Janome.  I'll never be able to afford it but it was fun trying it out.

Orange and lavender spots?

My daughter is just finishing the class room portion of Driver's Training.  On the way home last night I was quizzing her on what different signs and signals mean and what you're suppose to do.  She was doing pretty well until I posed this questions to her...

 

When the light is green you go.

When the light is red you stop.

But what do you do

When the light is blue

With orange and lavender spots?

~Shel Silverstein 

She had never heard that poem before and gave me a strange look.  I told her to ask her driver's ed teacher for his advice.

Ice fishing and I don't mix well

Ice fishing is a way of life around here and as a kid I never thought twice about venturing out on to a frozen lake where the water beneath you could easily be 20 feet deep or more.  I never had the fear that the ice would break, but as I've gotten older I've acquired an irrational fear (or maybe just a healthy dose of caution) of the ice.

Hubby has been trying to get me to go ice fishing with him for as long as we've been married, but I refused to go because I wasn't going to sit outside in the cold all day with no bathroom in sight.  Then he bought a fish house that is more or less a camper trailer with some of the comforts of home.  There's a table that turns into a bed, an upper bunk, a furnace to keep warm, a small stove with oven and yes a bathroom.  Although the bathroom is really a closet size room with a portable toilet.

The first time we took it out we had planned on staying the whole weekend on the lake, but as the temperature dropped, the ice began to creek and crack and I started to freak out.   To me cracking ice meant one thing, get off and quick.  Hubby tried to calm my fears by telling me the ice was expanding and it was nothing to worry about, it happens all the time.  But when a loud crack came from right underneath and shook the fish house a little, that was it; I was done.  I was not spending another minute, much less the rest of the weekend on the ice. That was several years ago and I refused to ice fishing again until recently.

We had gone out a few weeks ago and spend the whole day out there with out any freak out on my part, so when he mentioned fishing again I said sure.  We pulled out onto the lake yesterday and as usual I waited in the truck while he drilled the holes and warmed up the fish house.  Everything was fine, until I got out of the truck and noticed a crack in the snow above the ice running from right under the fish house.  I tried to kick the snow away to see how deep the crack went, but I just ended up shoving snow into the crack.  I figured it was just on the surface, it still bothered me but I tried not to think to much about it.   While fishing, every so often I'd hear the creaking I heard years ago and stare wide eyed at Hubby asking him "What's that noise?"  I don't know if he really didn't hear it or if he was pretending or if it just didn't bother him like it did me, but he'd say he didn't know what I was talking about.

We had just heated up some lunch and were getting ready to eat, when I heard the creaking again.  Only this time it was louder and continuous and I could see the water in the ice hole moving and I really started to freak out.  Hubby got up and looked out the window and told me it was just somebody driving across the ice.  But it got louder and louder and I swear I could feel the fish house move and panic set in.  "We got to go, we have to get off the ice NOW! WE GOT TO GO!"  I screamed on the verge of tears, but suddenly it stopped and there was a knock at the door.  It was my brother-in-law coming out to fish and just stopped by to see how it was going.  I was trying very hard not to cry or let my fear show but I think he could see something was wrong.  Hubby told him he made me nervous by making the ice creak when he drove out there.  Brother-in-law laughed.  After he left, the tears came and I was done with fishing.  I put my headphones on and turned on the radio to drown out the noise from the ice and eventually fell asleep.  It wasn't long after I woke up that Hubby said he was ready to go home and I was more than ready to leave.  I've had enough ice fishing for the year, if he suggest going again, he'll have to go by himself.  You won't catch me on the ice again any time soon.

" I don't know why you don't just go buy new pants"

My husband said after the the um-teenth time I asked him to look at my butt.  I know how weird that sounds, but I was working on my pants pattern; trying to fix the back crotch to remove the "smiles" from under my butt.  Oh if only it was that easy, Dear Husband.

I got into this project because I was upset with a certain plus size store constantly discontinuing the line of jeans I wear and having to launch a new jeans search every couple years.  That and the closure of another plus size store that I frequented, I felt this was the only option left.

I think I was able to take care of those "smiles", and now I'm working on narrowing the leg, but as you can see I now have other wrinkle lines to deal with.  Glenda is out of the office next week, so I can't seek her advice.  So until then I guess it's up to me to experiment and see what happens.

Fixing the front crotch

Yesterday I spend the afternoon drawing up another pattern to work with, but this time I got smart.  The first two patterns I drew, if for some reason I needed to compare it to the master pattern I couldn't do it very easily because I didn't remember what measurements I used from the master, or they wouldn't line up like they should have or I had made so many changes that it wasn't the same pattern.  While I was drawing up the new one I decided to write the measurements next to each dot so if I needed to match it up with the master again everything would be where it was suppose to be.  Using a grain board, I also marked the high hip, low hip and crotch line in case I needed to make adjustments in those areas.  It's a good thing I did too, because after making my muslin, I had to use the low hip line to adjust the center front.  I had to take out about 1 1/2 inches.  It pulled the front crotch up slightly and just looks better.

Front view after shorting center front

Front view before shorting center front.  See the fabric pooling at the bottom of the zipper

I also used the grain board to draw the hem line, since I was having issues with the inseam hem pulling up and I wasn't sure it was straight in the first place.   Just looking at these photos I do think the inseam is hanging straighter but I won't know for sure until I finish the rest of my adjustments.

Next I'll be working on the back and tapering the legs.  Glenda suggests I add 5/8 of an inch to the back crotch point.  She's mentioned it before but I was being a bonehead and didn't want to.  I think it's time I do what I'm told.  She also mentioned needing more room in the high hip.  Another something I didn't want to do because I'm worried about getting the elephant ear effect that I had in the first pair, but my husband told me just to try it and see.  Glenda's out of the office next week, so I'll have time to do a pair my way and another pair her way and see which one looks better.  I have a feeling I'm going to loose.

No wonder it doesn't fit

I've been fighting with this pattern for at least 2 weeks and have come to the conclusion that I just need to start over.  I've measured, remeasured and remeasured again, and decided I made the crotch curve to short and no amount of adding to the crotch points is ever going to make a difference.  Last night I added 2 inches to the back, which brought it back up to my waistline, but it threw off the rest of the waist edge, because I had such a sharp angle from the center back to the side seams.  I know I should have added 2 inches to the front too, but I don't need more room in the front.  I'm going back to my original crotch curve measurements from the first pair of pants.  I need to get the crotch curve figured out before I can even think of making other adjustments.  I found a crotch curve tutorial, and guess that will be my next step if I can't get it to fit right.  So as much as I hate to say it, it's back to the drawing board.

Learning curve

Using what I learned from my first pair of pants, I decided to try another pair with some modification.  My first pair, although wearable, needed some work.  The waist was to big, the hips were to full, the legs to wide, ect.  The second pair I wanted to fix all of that.  So I pulled out my tracing paper and using the correct measurements, drew up another pattern.  I wasn't sure how to go about narrowing the leg, so following the Sure Fit master pattern, I drew seam lines for 13 sizes and sewed the tracing paper together until I got to my desired width.  I'm thinking I could probably go down another inch or so and I found this video to be helpful for future reference, but I have other issues to take care of first. 

I realized from these pics that I have a tilted waist and need to make the front quite a bit shorter than the back.  Which also affects my crotch curve, giving me a very short front curve and a long back curve.  I measured using a crotch-o-meter and found my front is 13" and my back is 22".  Looking at these pants that means I need to raise the center back about an inch, and add a 1/2" to 5/8" to the back crotch point.  Hopefully that will take care of the little wedgie and bring my waistband up over the top of my underwear.  The other issue I'm having and I didn't notice it on the first pair until they were done, is the inseam pulls up.  You can really see it in the back view.  I tried to correct it by putting a wedge in the inseam to lengthen it, but that just made it worse because I had all this extra fabric in the inner thigh.  Turns out I did the opposite of what I should of done.  I need to take a wedge out at the side seam.  Here Glenda shows how to fix this.

This pair fits pretty well in the waist and hips, if I can take care of the back crotch issues I think I getting close to where I want to be.

Bad Romance

Knitting this sweater was like a relationship gone bad from the very beginning. At first it was new and exciting. I couldn’t wait to spend my evenings curled up on the couch, running my fingers though its yarn, but soon it became tedious and boring. I’ll admit to having a wandering eye; and soon I was just going through the motions.

About a month into it, I decided I needed a break. I went on to pursue other interests, while the sweater just sat in a lump behind the couch.

Eventually, I went back to it and tried to make it work, but the sweater just wasn’t cooperating. I first had a feeling that it was over when I realized it wasn’t going to fit, but I wasn’t ready to give up. I thought if I just kept working on it everything would turn out ok.

After talking to some knitting friends, who reassured me it would be ok to call it quits since I really wasn’t happy, I pulled the yarn winder out and started the break up process. Sadly I watched as row by row my sweater disappeared, but my friends were right, I do feel better. I’m able to pursue other interests without the guilt, and my sweater has gone back into several balls of yarn to be used in another project.

Oh, Sweater, I loved the idea of you, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

The Absent Minded Seamstress

So my pants are done, and I'm cleaning up before starting something else, since it looks like a sewing store blew up in my basement.  My sewing area is so small it's sometimes difficult to keep all my work in that one spot, and my supplies gets spread all over the house.  This could be the reason why  I have 3 seam rippers, several marking pencils, two scissors, 3-4 things of unopened elastic strips, I just found the pressing ham I bought a few years ago, ect.   Yesterday I was looking for the open roll of tracing paper because I needed to draft a new pattern peice.  When I couldn't find it I had to open another roll, and then found the missing one today in the dinning room.

I really try to stay organized, but sometimes creativity strikes and I can't be bothered to put things back where they belong.  Before I start another project I'm going to try really hard to get everything put away, so maybe I'll have more room to work and spend less time looking for my supplies.